Friday, May 22, 2015

A new criminal offence of illegal working will apply to
migrants who have entered the country illegally and also those who came to the
country legally but are in breach of their conditions or have overstayed. Wages
paid to illegal migrants will be seized as proceeds of crime. Other proposed
measures are new powers to punish landlords who provide housing for illegal
immigrants and the banks will be instructed to implement further checks on bank
accounts. Force people to appeal against deportation after they have been
removed from Britain. Cameron announced
moves to reduce “significantly” the number of visas issued to skilled migrants.
It will also become an offence for businesses and recruitment agencies to hire
abroad without first advertising in the UK - a policy which also featured
prominently in Labour's election manifesto. In fact, Labour welcomed the Tory
proposals but said it did not go far enough.

Labour and the Tories try and out-compete each other in
scapegoating immigrants to divert attention from the fact that capitalism
caused these problems and their policies exacerbated them.

Don Flynn, of the Migrants' Rights Network, said seizing
wages would force some people into "systems of modern slavery without hope
of protection from the law".

"Irregular migrants in the UK fit no one's image of a
law-breaker living on the proceeds of crime," he said. "Their
vulnerable status means they are confined to the most insecure and exploitative
forms of employment, usually earning scarcely enough to maintain themselves on a
day-to-day basis."

The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants said the
measures would do nothing to ease the pressure on public services. The claim
that immigration is the cause of the problems with the welfare state is a
fallacy. Whichever party has been in power they have sought to break up and
privatise the welfare state to keep their big-business friends in profit. This
has resulted in the privatisation of council housing, cuts in benefits and
pensions, and job losses and closures. Immigration is used by big business and
its representatives in government to excuse underinvestment in vital services
and try and place the blame on anyone but themselves and their system.

The Socialist Party reasserts that the international class
struggle is a fact, that the working and ruling classes of the world have
nothing in common, and that every attempt to prevent the working classes of the
world from uniting in their own interests requires the unqualified condemnation
of all those who profess to speak in the interests of labour, regardless of
their assertions and pretenses to the contrary.
For that reason, every attempt to limit, control or manipulate the
working classes of the world in the free exercise of that right is meant to serve
the interests of the ruling classes of the world and also requires the
unqualified condemnation of all those who profess to speak in the interests of
labour. Socialists denounce every attempt to conceal the real motives behind
these efforts under the guise of such false pretenses as parroted by Cameron of
protecting the wages, jobs and the living standards of British workers against
“unfair competition” from illegal immigrant labour, or supposedly defending
immigrant workers against ruthless exploitation by unscrupulous employers as
the Labour Party tries to deceive. There is no such thing as a ‘British
interest’. Society is divided into different classes whose interests are at
odds to one another. Capitalism’s profits come from exploiting the labour of
working-class people. Nationality, immigrant or indigenous, is unimportant to
big business – it will pay as little as it can get away with. The debate on
immigration in Britain is not about the economic causes and consequences of
immigration at all. It is overwhelmingly a ‘debate’ that allows politicians and
others such as those in the right-wing media to whip up xenophobia and racism,
while posing as being concerned about the interests of workers or the poor.

Those who scapegoat immigrants as the source of stagnant or
falling wages, declining living standards and unemployment, and call for
punitive measures against them are mistaken. In truth, however, unemployment,
and whatever pressure immigrant labour places on wages, is a direct result of
the competitive capitalist system itself. It is a by-product of the system of
wage slavery, which forces workers to compete for their livelihoods on the
basis of the conditions laid down by the capitalist system. Accordingly,
efforts to scapegoat immigrants only serve to divide workers against one
another, place greater hardships on immigrants and their families, and draw
attention away from the capitalist source of these problems. The concern of
working-class people in Britain over the state of welfare provision and wage
levels is totally legitimate. However, to place the blame on ‘immigrants’ does
not address the causes of these problems or advance anything to improve the
situation. The problem is the capitalist system itself.

It is clear that capitalism with its private/state ownership
of the economy and exploitation is responsible for economic hardship and
insecurity for all workers; that it compels workers for economic reasons to
leave their home countries and seek employment elsewhere; that immigration
laws, whether promoted by so-called liberals or conservatives, only serve to
benefit the capitalist class. Accordingly, the critical issue facing workers
today is the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism.
British workers should have unqualified opposition to all efforts to restrict
the right to free immigration. The only way to prevent the race to the bottom
is a united struggle of all workers to demand decent pay and decent working
conditions for all. We have to stand clearly against the racism and nationalism
increasingly being spouted by the capitalist politicians. We have to oppose
deportations, the splitting up of families, and the many other inhumane acts of
an ever-more brutal immigration system. We have to condemn the cynical attempts
of capitalist politicians to play on these genuine fears in order to try and
secure a social base for their system. Anti-immigration campaigners talk about
‘the threat to the “British way of life” but most of what is good in that life
is being destroyed – not by immigration, but by the brutality capitalism and
its endless austerity.

The Socialist Party extends a fraternal hand of welcome to
all immigrant workers, and invites them to join in our efforts to abolish
capitalism and establish a free and democratic socialist society throughout the
world.

The future belongs to us, the workers. We know socialism is
possible. We know that only the workers can bring socialism about. We need to
build a society where we own in common the factories, the lands,—a society
where we are guaranteed housing, education, health-care and jobs. A society
where there will be no borders for the working class. We must let people know
that socialism is the only answer for the working class. Socialists understand
the fears of workers about increased immigration. A socialist world would be a
world without borders, but also a world without poverty and war forcing people
to move. Only by fighting for a socialist world is it possible to overcome the
barriers of the nation state and to create a world without countries and borders.